If you’re one to rise with the sun on a cold morning in the Ozarks, you might stumble upon one of nature’s most delicate cold-weather surprises: frost flowers! These intricate, ribbon-like curls of ice aren’t actual blooms, but rather water being forced out from a plant’s stem during bitterly cold temperatures.
In order for frost flowers to form, the ground must be unfrozen, allowing water to travel up into a plant’s stem. The water in the stem freezes into thin icy sheets as it encounters freezing temperatures above the ground. These thin ice sheets are then forced outward of the stem since water expands when it freezes, and as more water is brought up into the stem. This is the process that creates these curls that resemble petals or spun glass.
Frost flowers are most likely to form on cold, clear, and calm nights, and will be found at sunrise at the base of a plant’s stem. They are most common following the first hard freeze of the season, however they are possible later in winter in larger-stemmed plants…